I've been struggling with decreased brewing time, and increased desire to home brew.... I'm already starting to plan out my holiday ale, pumpkin ale, and a mild ale (to boot!) with the help of your article.

You could do a bunch of different beers by doing a 100% Pilsner mash and then making the beers different by the hops and yeast in different kettles:

I did something along these lines recently. I mashed Pilsner and Munich malts and split the wort into two kettles. Separately, I steeped some crystal 40, which I added to beer 1, and some special b and pale chocolate, which I added to beer 2. Beer 1 became an IPA (hoppy boil) and beer 2 became a dubbel (dark candi in boil), fermented with different yeast strains.